The Shadow Berserkr Thegn enjoyed the punishment he had doled out on the two Spartan Berserkrs who failed Lux Orbis and the Consul. He allowed no room for error in his own ranks, and he was well-educated in the various methods of castigation he could inflict.
He wouldn’t accept failures of any kind.
He watched as the smaller of the two took out his dagger, held it waveringly above his right index finger, and said in a shaky voice, “With my dagger, I will punish the hand that failed my Consul.” He brought the dagger down and removed his finger in one fell swoop. He returned the dagger to its sheath and waited. The larger Spartan Berserkr did the same and sheathed his dagger.
The Shadow Thegn credited them for their stoicism at least; they hadn’t uttered any cries of pain or anguish.
He stepped forward and said in an ominous voice, “Fail my Consul in your duties again, and I will have you remove more than just a finger. Go report to your Colonel, and don’t let me see you again.” The Shadow Thegn wondered how they would fare on their forty-eight-hour watch he had arranged for them, and if he would indeed see them again soon.
Now that the matter of their failure was handled, he turned his thoughts to the new priority he had just received from the Consul…finding any and all information about this assassin. The deep-retina scan returned nothing significant besides the flickering glance of an individual in Nova Gnosis garments, and he could say with high confidence that the two Spartan Berserkrs did not act nefariously in their failure.
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The Shadow Thegn began where all good investigations should start…with the people who knew shit. He would talk with the Shadow Berserkr Sergeants of Lux Orbis. If anyone knew this unknown Nova Gnosis traitor, they would. They saw everything.
He walked to the center of the Lux Orbis complex and ordered a bullet train to go to the Shadow Berserkr training Annex on the outskirts of level three—simply called the Shadow Complex by its Shadow Berserkr warriors. Against popular assumptions, the best Shadow Berserkr Sergeants and sequestered intel servers were there, not at the Lux Orbis HQ.
Bullet trains were available on the second to fifth level of each Pyrἰnas, as the first level had the subterranean tunnel. Lagos Pyrἰnas had a Lux Orbis building at its center which went through each level of the Pyrἰnas and served as the central hub for the bullet trains; the trains spread out like a star from there and then circled the perimeter of the Pyrἰnas. It would have been faster to reach his destination if the Shadow Thegn took the elevator down to the first level and taken a hover bike to his destination, but he disliked them. He liked to be lost in the crowds of the train. He liked to blend in and listen to the small-talk people had; they usually unwittingly provided the Shadow Thegn with useful information.
He arrived at the Annex in twenty-five minutes. He went straight to the Sergeant Centurion’s office, uploaded the image of the unknown Nova Gnosis woman to the sandboxed Shadow Berserkr server via his arm holo-cast, and ordered facial, iris, and trait recognition analysis to be completed within the hour on it.
He talked with the Sergeant Centurion in the meantime.